Her answer: "I would ask Thomas Hardy to write a poem about the urban landscape of New York in 2003. Hardy was able to mesh, in his time, the pastoral and the philosophical with exquisite lyricism. Even his pastoral gave way to the industrial revolution and World War I (I am thinking of 'Channel Firing' and the stanza: "The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, 'No; / It's gunnery practice out at sea / Just as before you went below; / the world [is] as it used to be: / All nations striving strong to make / red war yet redder . . ..'"). To have him witness how red our wars have become would allow him to produce (hopefully) a powerful and despairing poem."

     I find this response to be right-minded if a little incoherent (forgivable, probably, since it seems to have been given orally, without benefit of books), and it made me think of quite a list of 21c sights and sounds and obsessions I wish Hardy could have lived to write about: motorways, extreme sports, factory farming, environmental degradation, religious fundamentalism, the California recall election, etc. I wonder if Hardy could have identified a still point of observation from which to comment on the frantic quality of 21c life, or might he have been silenced--overwhelmed--by it?

     There's no answering my question, of course, but I thought it might start an interesting conversation on the Forum.

Bill, several years ago, when the technology was finally developed to the point where undersea exploration of the Titanic became possible, I wondered how the author of "The Convergence of the Twain" would have felt about all that vain gloriousness being exposed to dim moon-eyes individuals gazing at their television screens. Even more interesting would have been his reaction to the blockbuster movie of that august event.

Betty Cortus

Cheers,

Rosemarie